I went to see this with my BFF and we were discussing about the description of Ellen page character her friend gave to Jeese Eisenberg.
My friend says that ellen Page was cast on porpouse as an ironic Joke
the description of her friend being hot and irresistible but then we see a plain Jane.
But I thought that woody Allen wanted to tell us about the sex appeal is personality and not a bombshell like Megan Fox.
So what do you think ?
I completely agree with your friend: I think it's just a case of bad casting. Anne Hathaway might have been a better fit for the part.
After all, we are also led to believe that Antonio Albanese is the sexiest actor according to a famous film magazine.
http://tinyurl.com/cly7x4s
"I think it's just a case of bad casting."
She's not miscast according to Woody's casting criteria. See a question and answer from an interview with Woody.
Q. You also cast Ellen Page as a seductive and predatory actress who comes to Rome and immediately steals her best friend's boyfriend (played by Jesse Eisenberg). That was imaginative casting. I had never thought of her in that way before.
A. I wanted someone who was not sexual in a heavy-handed way. If I wanted an overtly sexual actress, I would cast someone like Scarlett Johansson. There are many actresses who blind you by how sexy they are. Ellen is a very sweet girl, but she can project something complicated and mysterious. You don't know too much about her - she gives you this neurotic feeling - but you know that sex with her would be an interesting experience. I didn't have to direct her: All I did was cast her. She took these monologues I gave her and did wonderful things with them. It was a treat to watch her in the dailies.
For more see:
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/03/3689070/to-rome-with-love-is-wood y-allens.html
If Woody Allen hired her, it's obvious that he doesn't think she is miscast...
http://tinyurl.com/cly7x4s
I guess you think you could cast a Woody Allen movie better than Woody. It's his casting criteria that was interesting - he wasn't looking for an Anne Hathaway type for the role. I thought he explained the casting of Ellen very well.
shareThanks for posting this. I thought Page was terribly miscast (still do) but Woody Allen's answer at least explains what he was trying to achieve - it just didn't work IMHO. I too thought Johannson would have been the go to girl for this role and yes she would have been the obvious choice but she would have delivered. Perhaps casting Maggie Gyllenhaal would have a been a good balance?
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Gyllenhaal is still too unattractive for the part and she'd also be too old.
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It was not a case of bad casting/bad actor.
Allen was going for that archetypal flighty, charismatic person who makes a makes a bond with someone almost because they realize it is a bad choice.
I think Ellen Paige could've pulled it off. She is a good actress.
But in this case, I believe it was a combo of bad acting + bad script that doomed her role.
I continually felt this was the first time she'd seen the script as she was reading her lines. As if she hadn't rehearsed it at all. She never found a place that seemed genuine. The words never belonged to her.
Plus, obviously, it was never clear why Eisenberg found her intellectually attractive when she was clearly such a poseur. Which would be Woody Allen's fault.
Also, Greta Gerwig's character was so bland, you couldn't tell why she was cast or what her character's motivations were. She was just Generic Girlfriend Being Cheated On.
i agree with you, i think the movie definitely showed why guys would always fall in love with her..
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I would punch her in the face.
shareI simply don't believe his reasons for casting her. Aside from her looks, what was so alluring about her character's personality anyway?
I think your friend is right, that or Allen wanted to use Page's currency, or she was one of just a few actresses who'd take the part for relatively little money. Or a combination of these reasons.
Sir Jeremy, then you didn't understand the movie at all if you don't get what was alluring about her character. Maybe you didn't find her alluring, but the Eissenberg character did and taht's the point.
shareI think everybody forgets that 'looks' and 'attraction' and the rest are always subjective in the eye of the beholder. I find Ellen Page more attractive than Anne Hathaway or Meagan Fox, but I know many men don't. Guess that's why I think she pulled-off the part very well and was easily the most memorable thing about the movie...maybe the only memorable thing
"Go balls deep, Dad!"
-Scotty Crane
But why did he find her alluring? What came across about her that was so attractive to him?
sharePlain Jane? She has a very beautiful face.
shareBut why did he find her alluring? What came across about her that was so attractive to him?
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She has a very beautiful face.
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Ditto.
"Go balls deep, Dad!"
-Scotty Crane
I think Ellen Page is a perfect choice. She only looks like plain Jane, she definitely isn't. She seems so average, so harmless but she can to hook any boy and it does not matter if he is her b/f boyfriend. Yes - and she does it without any reason (such as falling in love, for example). Just because she is what she is.
shareCan you explain exactly what he saw in her? Sorry, but your post is as clear as mud.
shareShe was nice, polite, girl-from-the-next-door kind.
She made impression like she would be his soulmate.
She raised interest about herself. So different from others.
What he failed to see - that he was just another link of a chain for her. That she did not care about her friends feelings.
Basically I think he saw what I saw, that Ellen Page is more physically attractive than Greta Gerwig. Seriously, for a guy that age, in that stage of his life, its that shallow, that simple.
..and no, she didn't care about her friend's feelings. Her character was meant to be selfish, self-obsessed about her career and climbing-up the class-ladder.
And to those who call Page a 'plain-jane'; obviously you guys haven't seen "Inception" with all the close-ups of her beautiful eyes and face.
"Go balls deep, Dad!"
-Scotty Crane
[deleted]
I also was slightly confused by her casting.
I do think she's incredibly attractive, but I didn't pick up the 'sexual vibe' that was described by her friend in the film. I mean, she talks about sex in her dialogue, but she didn't seem particularly sexual in any other way - it was entirely in the words spoken, not really apparent in her eyes or body language.
It may be that Woody Allen wanted to present a different kind of 'sexy' - and I do think Ellen Page is infinitely more appealing than a Megan Fox type - but the way she was described by her friend didn't seem to match the way the character was portrayed.
This story arc of the film was the least well-realized because of the performances.
Eisenberg played the adolescent dork type that he played quite well in previous high school/ coming of age type movies, but it didn't really work here as an architecture grad student in Rome.
Page is indeed physically attractive, in my opinion, but she fell flat in this role.
Just as Eisenberg played those adolescent roles I mentioned, well so did she: and it was generally not an educated intellectual or artistic type, but a street smart wisecracking gal.
And like Jesse, I think she wasn't able to get far enough away from those previous roles to make this one work.
Perhaps both actors have the potential to move beyond the role types I mentioned; they just didn't show it here.
I agree totally. Ellen Page is 'indie-cute' and boyishly attractive but not sexy (hey, just my opinion). The lesbian story she told should have made an impression on every guy in the audience (yeah we're that simple minded) but it had noooo punch. Johansson is obviously sexy on screen and would have worked in this role. Someone suggested Megan Fox. Fox is steammingly sexy but way too obviously so for this role (no sublty at all). If Allen wanted a 'not-so-obvious-sexy' actor I would have cast Maggie Gyllenhaal. She really jumped off the screen in Stranger Than Fiction in this way.
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All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Nah, MG is not sexy at all man.
shareI think you got what it was supposed to mean more than your friend.
To me, Monica was supposed to be one of those girls whose hotness is something your brain develops on its own and doesn't get a "THAT ONE!" signal from your eyes. From what it seemed, Eisenberg's character fell in love with her because of what she said, how she thought, and because he compared her to his girlfriend.
So, in comparison, he has this sort of boring blonde who seems like a housewife in the making, or this other girl who seems adventurous, has a thirst for knowledge and is exciting.
In a way, I think he found her hot because of what she offered as a person, and not just as something to have sex with which may have been the only compelling thing about the whole movie.
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She is beautiful but not hot, not even personality-wise. To me anyway, she didn't come across as adventurous and exciting with a thirst for knowledge, she seemed really try-hard and fake. And annoying and pretentious.
I felt more like it was Alec Baldwin's constant warnings about not getting together with her that planted the idea to get together with her ...
And her wardrobe was terrible.
Not nearly as bad as Greta Gerwig's wardrobe. Could they have picked more unflattering clothes for her? She has the potential to be much more beautiful and hot than Ellen Page. Ellen has that cute, girl next door kind of face, nothing really special, and how they dressed her here, she looked like she had the body of a little boy. I think there might be something to the anti-type casting that people have brought up here. Allen loves to portray neurotic, highly verbal, "complicated" kinds of women who for some reason become irresistible to his alter-ego characters. To me, his characters are typically falling in love in a flighty unrealistic manner. At least this time, he made Monica an annoying phony--almost a parody of some of his past characters. That was refreshing.
shareNo, she was just miscast.
That point would have worked if Gerwig's character hadn't been going on and on about how she was so beautiful and men found her irresistible.
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Nothing’s gonna change my world...